XPeng used its AI Day 2025 to announce a quartet of new developments in their core business areas, including robotaxis, updated XNGP, the next-gen IRON humanoid robot, and a new eVTOL aircraft.

In doing so, boss He Xiaopeng announced that XPeng is repositioning itself as a “global embodied intelligence company,” putting further distance between the idea that they are merely a car company.

The announcement centred around four flagship advances, including the official launch of the brand’s VLA 2.0 large model, the impending arrival of three robotaxis and a new flagship model variant, a softer, smarter, and more flexible version of the IRON humanoid robot along with planned use cases, and a six-seater tiltrotor flying car from the rebranded Abridge flying car company.

These products, all with confirmed mass-production timelines, signal XPeng’s strategic pivot from pure automotive manufacturing to a broader technology frontier encompassing robotics and low-altitude mobility.

From Mobility Explorer to Embodied Intelligence Pioneer

Chairman and CEO He Xiaopeng used the event to announce a fundamental shift in XPeng’s corporate positioning, stating that the company is now a “mobility explorer in the physical AI world and a global embodied intelligence company.”

This rebranding is underpinned by what XPeng claims is a unique, full-stack, self-developed Physical AI system in China.

This integrated technology stack, covering chips, operating systems (large models), and intelligent hardware, forms the foundation for its new product portfolio.

The company believes the convergence of the digital AI revolution and the physical world’s shift to new energy is creating the next major wave: Physical AI.

VLA 2.0 Large Model: A New Paradigm for Real-World AI

The core of XPeng’s new strategy is the VLA 2.0 large model, described as the future “operating system of the physical AI world.”

The model adopts a novel “Vision-Implicit Token-Action” path, bypassing the need for language translation to generate action commands directly from visual signals.

This end-to-end approach is a significant departure from traditional architectures and has been trained on nearly 100 million video clips—data XPeng says is equivalent to 65,000 years of human driving—without manual data annotation.

It’s claimed the model can understand, predict, and self-evolve within the physical world, and is designed for cross-domain application in AI cars, robots, and flying cars.

To deploy the billions-parameter model onto its vehicles, XPeng developed a custom compiler for its Turing AI chip, achieving a feat of software-hardware integration.

The first vehicle function based on VLA 2.0, “Narrow Road NGP,” reportedly increases average takeover mileage on complex narrow roads by 13 times, and was demonstrated via a video from an XPeng as it navigated a particularly tight gap.

The model will be open-sourced to global partners, with Volkswagen named as its launch strategic partner and set to also adopt the Turing AI chips in their China-market vehicles.

User trials are scheduled for the end of December 2025, with a full rollout to XPeng Ultra models planned for Q1 2026.

Robotaxis Heading to Production in 2026

In a move that looks aimed directly at Tesla’s Cybercab, chairman He Xiaopeng presented a clear vision of future mobility with the simultaneous announcement of three embodied intelligence products, which in a later Q&A were claimed to be 5-, 6-, and 7-seater models.

The models, which are slated for mass production and pilot operation in 2026, will rely on a vision and radar-based solution without lidar or high-precision maps, and powered by four Turing AI chips for a total of 3000 TOPS of computing power.

Designed from inception to be driverless, they feature a dual-redundancy hardware architecture for safety and an external display for pedestrian interaction.

XPeng also plans to open a kind of franchised robotaxi offering, whereby people could buy a minimum fleet of 30 robotaxis and operate small businesses in towns and cities across China.

Also set to launch in 2026, Amap was announced as the first global ecosystem partner for the Robotaxi service.

In addition to the new L4-dedicated models, Xiaopeng also announced a plan to add a new variant to existing models above the current ‘Ultra’ variant, called ‘Robo’.

This new model, which would also feature four Turing AI chips, would have the same hardware and capabilities as the Robotaxi, but would give customers a chance to use and operate this within their own personal cars.

Second-gen IRON Humanoid Robot Demonstrated

XPeng’s humanoid robot, IRON, is also heading into a new generation, with the iRobot-esque previous generation being upgraded both in mechanical ability, hardware, and with a new fabric-like skin to soften up the appearance.

It features a human-like spine, bionic muscles, full-coverage soft skin, and 82 degrees of freedom for fluid movement, with hands boasting 22 degrees of freedom and a 1:1 human size.

Powered by three Turing AI chips (2250 TOPS), it utilises a combination of VLT, a new development by XPeng described as Vision – Language – Thinking, VLA, and VLM models to enable “conversation, walking, and interaction.”

To address industry challenges, XPeng has established an embodied intelligence data factory in Guangzhou and aims for large-scale mass production of high-level humanoid robots by the end of 2026.

Baosteel was named an ecosystem partner, with IRON robots slated for deployment in industrial inspection roles.

XPeng also announced that they are rowing back on plans to use IRON robots in factories for tasks such as screwing, instead opting to maximise the existing benefits and capabilities of the robots in roles such as hosts, greeters, and car dealership product experts.

A868 Full Tiltrotor eVTOL Revealed and Land Aircraft Carrier Updated

The fourth and final product announcement was the new A868, a full tiltrotor eVTOL aircraft from XPeng’s flying car subsidiary, Abridge, previously known as AeroHT.

The new model, the brand’s largest yet, looks more like a plane, but offers tiltable rotors to enable vertical take-off and horizontal travel, with a long range of more than 500km and a top speed of 360kph.

It would carry as many as six passengers, rather than the Land Aircraft Carrier flying module’s two, and would require dedicated take-off areas.

XPeng also offered an update on the Land Aircraft Carrier, a six-wheeled van-like unit that carries four passengers and the two-seat flying module in the back, which can fly for around half an hour and recharge to 80% in just 30 minutes when docked in the Land Aircraft Carrier.

The brand’s first production module rolled off the line a few days ago, and an official launch is expected in 2026 with over 7,000 orders already placed for the novel flying solution.

The module will require a special flying licence to operate which can be obtained after 30 hours of flying practice, though the brand also claims the system is so simple it can be learned in five minutes and mastered within an hour.

A partnership with the Dunhuang Municipal Government, a popular tourist area in Northwest Central China with large desert and canyon landscapes, will launch a low-altitude self-driving tourism route in Northwest China in 2026.